He spent ten years writing a book about sympathy before he wrote the one about markets.
Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, in June 1723 and studied at the University of Glasgow before attending Balliol College, Oxford.1 His first major work was not about economics. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, explored how human beings form moral judgments through sympathy, the capacity to imagine what another person feels. Smith spent ten years writing it.
In 1776, Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the work that would define his reputation.2 The book's most cited passage describes a pin factory in which the division of labor allows ten workers to produce 48,000 pins per day, a quantity impossible for each worker acting alone. Smith observed that specialization increased productivity but also narrowed the scope of each worker's experience.
Smith warned that a person who spends a lifetime performing "a few very simple operations" may become "as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become."3 This passage, often omitted from popular summaries, complicates the image of Smith as an unqualified champion of free markets. He also advocated for public education as a remedy for the mental degradation caused by extreme specialization.
Smith served as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1752 to 1764 and later as Commissioner of Customs in Scotland. He never married and published only two books in his lifetime. He died in Edinburgh on July 17, 1790, at the age of sixty-seven.4